


Always Here

by sonictrowel



Series: Long Night in the Blue House [37]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family Feels, Flash Forward, Gen, Internal Monologue, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 23:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10841436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonictrowel/pseuds/sonictrowel
Summary: Once the sun had risen over Darillium, the decades of snow began to slowly melt away.  Birds that must have migrated halfway round the world returned, and began to make their nests in the gutters and sing their bloody heads off early in the ‘morning.’  Green flourished over the less-dusty patches of land, in what would certainly be a short-lived burst of life before the endless sunlight shrivelled it all up.It was profane, watching the dark, icy planet where they’d been so happy transform with the brilliant bloom of springtime without River there to see it.  With River gone to her death.





	Always Here

**Author's Note:**

> Mainly an internal monologue for Twelve, bit angsty. Not terribly exciting, but the previous chapter is there for your fluff buffer if needed!
> 
> Love you all and your wonderful comments!

[Calderon Delta, 5102]

Milly had told the Doctor years ago to come to her straightaway after Darillium.  He probably should have listened, of course, but he just couldn’t face seeing anyone, not even her.  He’d hardly spent half an hour being her dad, he couldn’t just drop in on her a total fucking mess when he was supposed to be the grownup in the situation.  He’d just needed a little time.  Because he knew, now.  He knew it would all be alright in the end.  He knew they still had all that ahead of them.

He’d hoped that would make it a little easier to say goodbye.  It didn’t.

He stopped sleeping in their bedroom immediately.  The bed where he spent twenty-four years and some hundred and fifty before that; holding River, making love to her, reading her stories and his diary, laughing and kissing and crying and looking into her glittering eyes, telling her he loved her a hundred thousand times— that wasn’t somewhere he could be right now.  He’d probably still smell her in their sheets, see her hair on the pillowcases.  He didn’t think he could bear it.

He didn’t even have an old bedroom to go to; his bedroom had become _their_ bedroom when River insinuated herself into his life, and he never stopped sleeping in it— when he slept at all— while they were apart before.  He knew then that she was still out there, somewhere, and she was alright, and that had been enough to make it a bit of a comfort.  To make him feel that, in a way, she was still right by his side.  It was true, in a sense, that he could always see her.

Now, she might yet be out there in the universe, having adventures of her own, meeting his long-past selves and erasing his memories with a kiss.  But not for long.  He could no longer keep telling himself he might once again be woken up to the delightful surprise of her curled up next to him, any day now, any day...

He would have stopped sleeping altogether, but in his dreams, he _did_ see her.  She was there, waiting for him.  Their meetings kept him going when the miserable endless day was too much to face.  For a while, he slept in Milly’s old room.  Vincent curled up beside him every night— he missed River too.  The Doctor didn’t tell him she’d be back; he feared it wouldn’t be that soon.

Once the sun had risen over Darillium, the decades of snow began to slowly melt away.  Birds that must have migrated halfway round the world returned, and began to make their nests in the gutters and sing their bloody heads off early in the ‘morning.’  Green flourished over the less-dusty patches of land, in what would certainly be a short-lived burst of life before the endless sunlight shrivelled it all up.

It was profane, watching the dark, icy planet where they’d been so happy transform with the brilliant bloom of springtime without River there to see it.  With River gone to her death.

Turning the TARDIS back into a police box had been a difficult moment.  But he kept the interior of the blue house exactly as it was; their home, waiting for her to return and bring it back to life.  But now the front doors opened to the control room as before.  Now there was no reason to stay still, there was nothing good to keep him here on this miserable rock.  He’d be back to Darillium, of course.  There were preparations to be made.  But not now.

The Doctor invited Nardole along with him, since Milly’d said that he had.  For some reason, in spite of the Doctor’s utterly miserable temperament surely making him poor company, Nardole agreed.  Then again, permanent sunlight probably wasn’t an ideal environment for one so pale and bald, so perhaps he was just eager to leave.  As soon as they left the planet, he gave Nardole a few lessons in flying the TARDIS.  Not something he usually taught companions, but he wanted to hop into the Vortex and hide away and leave the rest up to someone else for a while.  It was just too soon.

The Doctor eventually holed up in the TARDIS library.  Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest choice.  Maybe it was self-flagellation for his guilt.  But anyway, in the library he could research.  He could focus on figuring out what to do next.  He started sleeping there too, bringing his meals back with him, and only leaving for absolute necessities.  Vincent slept beside him on the settee whenever his eyes were aching and his head swimming from all the endless pages and he laid down to rest.  

In his dreams, he and River visited scenes from their memories.  Her flat on Luna.  Their wine bar on Darillium.  The little blue house.  Sometimes he was Bow Tie in the memories, but that was alright.  He got to pour his hearts out to her, telling her all the things he’d wanted to share with her that day, before he realised all over again for the thousandth time that she wasn’t there.  He got to hold her in his arms and carry her to their bed and feel the incredible perfect warmth of her all around him, and knowing it wasn’t _physically_ real didn’t matter at all. Her soul was entangled with his and that’s how they belonged.  

And then one day, as he rifled through the stacks in search of yet another highly specific technical reference on materialisation beams, he heard the TARDIS brakes screeching.  Where the hell was Nardole taking them?  Well, it was no matter.  He wasn’t coming out.  Nardole chose the destination, he could deal with whatever turned up out there.

A few minutes later Milly’s voice rang through the library.  It took the Doctor a moment to wrap his mind around it— he guessed they’d finally arrived where she once told him he’d end up.  His hearts skipped a beat at the sound of his daughter’s voice.  He’d nearly forgotten there was someone else in existence who could make him not feel so lonely.

And he felt the hurt easing the longer he spent with her.  Seeing Mils was a constant reminder of all the good that was yet to come for them.  And god, but they’d done well.  She was so brilliant.  She was so kind and funny and clever and every time he saw a little of himself and a little of River in her he was taken aback by how miraculous that was.  He hardly deserved to be part of such a wonderful thing as making this lovely person with his amazing wife.  He wasn’t good enough for them.

He was, truly, so very lucky.

And so hope buoyed him again, as he and Nardole walked the beaches and cobblestone streets of Tarragona Nueva with Milly, watching the waves, trying new bakeries and restaurants, and on one occasion, making a very odd trio in a discoteca.  He could wait.  As much as it hurt to be apart, he could wait, because so much was still ahead of them.  Of course, grief would do what it would, and sometimes it still washed over him without warning and crushed his hearts in its fists and stole his breath.  But he could keep moving, he could keep busy, and he could do whatever he had to do until they were together again.

He started sleeping in their bedroom again.  He looked at River’s things all strewn about and reminded himself that she’d be coming back for them.  It was just another point in time, and time wasn’t _really_ linear, much as he had to experience it that way at the moment.  At some other point in time, she was already here.  

She was putting on her earrings in front of the vanity and catching his eye over her shoulder in the mirror and giving him that warm, impish smile.  He was kissing her good morning and she was rolling them over, pinning him to the bed, and telling him she could make it better.  She was strapping on her gun belt and tying up her roll kit and nodding dismissively at him as he criticised her trowel.  Some time, right here, they were waking to their baby crying in the cot that now sat empty.

While Milly was at the university, the Doctor continued his research. He was hunting for information in some ancient, dusty, very much forbidden tomes he’d swiped from the Archives on Gallifrey half a dozen lifetimes ago, when he stumbled upon a very out of place business brochure protruding from the shelf.  It was for Harmony Shoal.  The head-splitters.  

“Was this you?” he asked aloud.  Vincent lifted his head from a nearby cushion and yawned and stretched luxuriously when he realised he wasn’t being addressed.  The TARDIS remained silent.

The Doctor opened the leaflet.  They’d opened locations in capital cities all over Earth in the year 2016.  That couldn’t be a good sign.  He supposed, after all, they were a bit of unfinished business, since he’d spared not a single thought for what the sinister group might be up to whilst he was on Darillium.  

He glanced over the map of locations.  Perhaps it was finally time he paid another visit to Manhattan.

 


End file.
